Electric Church

II AN ENDLESS TRAIL OF SUNSETS

Pickering’s was a good place the System Pigs hadn’t noticed yet, below the radar of the entire System of Federated Nations. It was semilegit, with some ancient liquor license and a paper deed, somewhere, or so rumor had it. It was located on the first floor-the only floor left-of a burned-out hulk of a building that looked, from the outside, ready to collapse at any moment. Liberal bribes to the Crushers kept it open, at least for the time being. Pick himself was the oldest man I knew: fifty if he was a day, ancient and always pissed off, a fat, slouching blob of a man with white, yellowing hair and gnarled, painful-looking hands. I’d never seen Pick stand up.

Pick had just two rules: You paid your bills, and you took fights outside. Inside, it was civilized. Pick didn’t use Droids, either-the only waitress was a living human being, and she would slap your hand to prove it. The place was thick with smoke and plotting, and nobody looked around too freely. It was best to mind your own business and keep your hands on the ancient wooden tables scrounged from the wreckage of riots past. Pickering’s was not a gentle place-these days you either had a job or you didn’t, you were either System Police or a criminal. You had to be, and Pickering’s was full of the thin, gray people like me, people not above killing someone, stealing something, starving to death over the course of an entire lifetime. People got killed in Pickering’s. Even the most civilized places had their moments.

Nad and I had found some space at a table in the back near the door, where Kev Gatz was already half in the bag and in no condition to resist our invasion. I shoved my way onto the side facing the door. Over cups of Pick’s bathtub gin we got shitfaced and sat talking about Monks, Nad’s current obsession beating my weary boredom. Besides, I was hoarding the pitiful yen I’d earned for the Little Prince-a job I wasn’t proud of and didn’t want to think about-and Nad was willing to buy a few rounds, so I let him talk, even though he was telling the story of Kitlar Muan again and I wanted badly to twist Nad’s nose and tell him to shut the hell up, but free booze was going a long way with me after my day.

“Who the fuck,” Nad wondered, “would have their heads sliced open and their brains stuffed into a can?”

Kev Gatz sat in silence. Gatz was… special. We called him the Pusher. He hardly ever spoke, a thin shock of gray hair sitting on top of a head that looked like the skin had been stretched thin over the bones. He was wearing dark glasses-Gatz almost always wore his glasses. He sat so still it surprised you to notice his drink disappearing, as if he was waiting for you to look away before making any moves.

“Nad,” he croaked, “shut the fuck up, okay?”

I swirled the liquor in my cup and looked around the place, feeling tired. The cream of Manhattan’s thieves and murderers in one place, getting stoned and making noise. An SSF raid would clear a lot of dockets, I thought. The Pigs would pay a hard price for it, though, considering the sheer amount of hardware hidden away in holsters, secret pockets, spring-loaded sleeve units. Not that a raid was likely, the way Pick greased the Crushers to pretend Pickering’s was a black hole. A few people nodded at me as I moved my eyes around, and I gave them your standard-issue hardassed nod back, well-practiced.

I took a breath, closed my eyes, and swallowed my drink in one fast motion, not breathing again until it had hit my stomach like acid, like lead pellets. I winced and slammed my cup down, fighting my body’s natural urge to reject it all, and presently the sting faded into a warm glow, and I relaxed, signaling Melody for another round and pointing gleefully at Nad.

Nad hadn’t taken Kev’s advice. As he rambled on about the Monks and how much they freaked him out and how anyone who volunteered for that shit was crazy, the door opened behind him, and with a blast of rain and wind from the black night a Monk stepped into Pickering’s. No one took much notice at first-the Monks liked to just stop into places sometimes, say their piece, and leave-and it paused right behind Nad, cocking its plastic head and listening. I had a weird gut reaction-my balls tightening up and all the hairs on my arms standing up. I thought of the three Monks keeping pace with us earlier, and sat up straighter, eyes fixed on the Tin Man.

“I appreciate your aversion to the concept,” it said in the standard deep, modulated artificial voice. “I myself once shared it.”

The place quieted a bit. It didn’t go silent, but the whole place’s attention shifted, you could tell. The Monks did enter public houses, make their usual speeches, and tolerate being ignored, but this was a little different. None of us came to Pickering’s for different. We came to make deals and plot strategies and drink until we couldn’t see straight.

Nad grimaced but didn’t turn around. He shrank visibly before us, collapsing down onto the carved-up table.

“I would like to speak to you about immortality, if I may, Mr… Muller, isn’t it?” the Monk continued. They always knew who you were. Wireless data feeds with mother church, Optical Facial Recognition; they snapped a photo of your face and had it OFRed in seconds, like Droids. But they weren’t Droids. They were cyborgs-robot body, human brain-and they all used to be regular folks, like me. “It will only take a few minutes, and I would appreciate your time.”

The whole place was watching Nad out of the corner of their eyes-too cool to actually look, but interested anyway. The preaching on the corners was pretty normal, but I didn’t think I knew anyone who’d witnessed an actual attempt at conversion. There were more and more Tin Men on the streets every day, telling you how great it was to be immortal, to be nuclear-powered and free from pain-and fuck if I didn’t sometimes think, Damn, what if the motherfuckers are right? — but they always popped up as if by magic, converting overnight, like Nad’s friend Kitlar Muan. Curiosity ate away at the blank-faced cool we all tried to project twenty-four hours a day.

Nad wasn’t enjoying the attention. He wasn’t a tough guy. His response, murmured into his cup, was barely audible. “No. No, I’m a busy man… ”

I kept my eyes on the Monk and moved my hand into my coat pocket out of sheer, dumb instinct. There was nothing to fear, the Monks never did anything. But I was tense as if someone had a gun on me.

“I understand,” the Monk replied immediately, pleasantly. It stood perfectly straight, and the etched smile on its face didn’t twitch. “Truly, I do. Time is your curse, Mr. Muller. Lack of time. Everything requires time, and you have so little. This leads me to the fundamental question the Electric Church poses: How can you be saved when you have no time? How can you possibly combat your sins in the time allotted you?”

The place was almost quiet by then as people gave up trying to be cool and just twisted around to watch the show. As the Monk moved, the soft whirr and hum of tiny motors and hydraulics could be heard.

“Consider the technological advances of the human race in recent centuries-quantum computers, limited teleportation, genetic engineering-we are a race designed to plumb the mysteries of the multiverse. It is God’s plan that we do so, that we investigate and harness the forces of nature. Why were we designed this way? We are meant to find salvation through our progress. But computers cannot output salvation. And we cannot teleport salvation into this room. We cannot splice salvation into our genes. Salvation must be attained, Mr. Muller. But so few of us achieve this. Do you know anyone who has been saved?” The Monk stared at Muller for a moment, then turned to regard the whole place. “Have you? You? Anyone?”

The Monk shifted slightly, his robe rustling in the stillness. “Of course not. You have not lived long enough. You must work, earn yen, live. You must rest. You must eat. You must dress yourselves and relieve yourselves and fight and love and struggle, struggle, struggle.” The Monk’s voice rose in perfectly calibrated waves, its bass reinforced electronically, booming through the room. “I represent the first step in the correct direction. God has planned for us. This is the Way.”

Its voice suddenly dropped until it was just loud enough to be heard throughout the room. “I am time enough at last. I am immortal. I am impervious to time, to hunger, to lethargy, to apathy. Only through eternity can you be saved, my friends. Salvation cannot be attained in a mere century. You, Mr. Muller, may live to be ninety or one hundred. A woman in Minsk is 126 and still working for the System Police as an FLS radio operator. One hundred and twenty-six paltry years is not enough time. Five hundred and twenty-six is not enough time. Salvation is not easy. Salvation is complex, the most complex puzzle ever devised. A thousand years, and perhaps we can begin to decipher the first word of the question. A million years, we may begin to work on the answer. Perhaps when the universe has collapsed in on itself, and all the worlds scattered throughout have been eaten by hungry suns, perhaps then we will be on the verge, about to triumph and join the angels. I can only hope we have not been too slow to realize the truth, that we do indeed have enough time.”

The Monk paused and scanned the room. No one had moved an inch. I felt like something huge and invisible had launched itself at my back.

“What I am sure of, Mr. Muller, is your puny lifespan is not enough. You can barely perceive the need for salvation in that time. When you do, when you’re lying old and frail, and you realize there is indeed a question in need of an answer-it will be too late. You will not have enough time. Unless,” the Monk returned its mirrored glass gaze to Muller, “unless you realize the truth and join the Electric Church. Accept Salvation through Immortality. Learn the Mulqer Codex, and prepare for eternity. That is your only hope.”

The Monk paused again. No one moved. We didn’t dare.

“Thank you for your time,” the Monk finally said and turned away, exiting the bar in a flash of rain and darkness.

For a few seconds, the whole place remained still and relatively quiet. Nad just stared down at the tabletop, unhappy. Then, from somewhere in the back someone shouted “Holy shit!” and the whole place erupted into laughter, and the hum of conversation returned to its usual level: deafening, and now punctuated by plenty of pithy comments about the Monks. I couldn’t relax. I drank three more gins, fast, and felt nothing. I couldn’t explain why, but that Monk had set off all my alarms.

People started buying Nad drinks out of pity. Nad was almost a mascot in the bar, this criminal failure who couldn’t shut up, and seeing him quiet and subdued generated more warm feelings in the place than I’d thought possible. Inspired by this, Gatz, Nad, and I huddled together and took our drinking seriously. By the time Pickering’s closed, it was just the three of us sitting at a long creaking table.

“Come on, Nad,” I said, standing up to see how bad off I was. After hours of Pick’s gin, the world was made of soft rubber; everything was hard to accomplish but nothing hurt too badly, so what the fuck. “Come on, I’ll see ya home, then, eh?”

We saw Gatz off. He was stumbling this way and that, but no one fucked with the Pusher, even though he looked like a junkie, all gray and sinew, those stupid sunglasses on at night. So I just let him stumble home to puke and sleep it off.

Nad was in a bad way. Too drunk, too freaked out, mumbling to himself and white-eyed. I thought I’d see him home, make sure he didn’t get rolled-honor among thieves, at least thieves that were also your friends. Nad and I, we went back a ways. We were old enough to remember better days, before the System, before the Joint Council, the System Security Force, all the bullshit. We remembered our dads having jobs. Not good jobs, but jobs. I didn’t know what Nad’s friendship was worth to me when push came to shove, but fuck, it was just a walk home. It was worth that much.

It was late. The Normals were all asleep. It was just me and Nad on the streets, listing this way and that. We knew the area, and while that wouldn’t save us from getting popped, it at least meant we’d see it coming, even half-assed drunk. So, when there was a noise behind us, a scrape of a heavy boot, I was more annoyed than anything else. I was tired and putting on my hardass face took effort.

“Back off, shithead,” I growled over my shoulder, pushing Nad forward to keep him in motion, “or I’ll fucking tear you up.”

It was all a pissing contest. It never stopped. You couldn’t go soft, not even for a minute.

“Mr. Muller interests me, friend. Move along,” the Monk said softly. “Mr. Muller, let me show you an endless trail of sunsets. Let me save you.”